'They thought I was mad' – from a Morris Minor to one of Britain's most important classic car collections

They call him “Mr Lock-Up”. And just like some of the customers who rent thousands of garages from him to store forgotten household possessions or cherished vehicles, he too has a gift for collecting the unusual.

The difference is that Rodger Dudding thinks big. What started with a single 1968 Jensen Interceptor FF and a humble Morris Minor saloon that once belonged to his father has now blossomed into a dazzling collection of vehicles so rare and diverse that film and TV producers are beating a path to his door to hire them.

The blockbuster movie Allied, starring Brad Pitt, used six of Rodger’s cars including a 1934 Vauxhall Light Six, an Austin 7 and a 1938 Rover 12. They’re all part of a remarkable and fast-growing collection of about 380 vehicles tracing the evolution of motoring from the stately two-seater 1911 Vulcan to a 2014 Rolls-Royce Wraith, all kept under guard in a warehouse.

The story began 46 years ago when Rodger’s late wife, Gloria, sent him to the shops to buy dinner. He returned not just with a pound of sausages but also an idea that turned him into a multi-millionaire, something that ultimately sprouted one of the most extraordinary private collections of cars and motorcycles in the UK.

The car that started it all – Rodger's father's Morris Minor.

“They [the shop] handed out numbered plastic discs to save queueing,” explains Rodger (79) as I meet him at his own, rather grand lock-up. “It wasn’t very hygienic or efficient. I had an idea I could do better.”

The former Royal Navy engineering apprentice departed deep in thought and, weeks later, had invented the Lonsto Queue Management Systems ticketing machine that keeps queues moving at hospitals, supermarkets, shoe shops and thousands of other stores all around the globe. It was a “eureka” moment that has kept profits rolling in to this day.

It was a second gamble, however – while attempting to kick-start the fledgling ticket-machine business, funded by three mortgages on the family home – that sealed Dudding’s fate, eventually placing the cream of the world’s car markets at his fingertips. As he laboured in a tumble-down office fashioned from an old stable block in Muswell Hill, north London (“We had to hang the carpets up when it rained because we got flooded”) his landlord offered him 10 semi-derelict lock-up garages for £1,000 each.

A Jag and a Jensen.

“It was a lot of money but I couldn’t say no,” says Dudding. “Within weeks the rent began trickling in and I never looked back.”

Today it’s not unusual for Dudding to have bought another dozen lock-ups by lunchtime on a good day, often sight unseen. He now owns 14,000, stretching from south-west England to the Midlands. About 80 per cent of them, he says, are used for general household storage.

But over the years he’s had to deal with countless cannabis factories, about 30 dead bodies (the downside of running a lock-up business is that they offer concealment for both murder and suicide victims), a dozen IRA bomb factories, illegal weapons caches, even a customer who turned his lock-up into a love-nest complete with double-bed, TV and chandeliers.

Today Dudding’s garages are worth about £100 million. A typical lock-up costs him from £15,000 to £20,000 in the provinces and from £100,000 to £300,000 in central London. He lets outer London lock-ups for about £50 a week; elsewhere they can be rented for £18-25 a week, plus VAT. Many newly-acquired lock-ups are packed with rubbish and he faces a bill of up to £15,000 a month to clear them.

But gems emerge, too, such as the fabulous 1939 LG6 Drophead Lagonda and Mk6 Bentley discovered behind a mountain of bric-a-brac in Palmers Green, after he signed the deal on row of garages bought from a family trust.

A line of Lagondas.

“They didn’t know they were there and couldn’t believe it when I phoned their solicitor,” says Dudding. “The man from the trust said 'Well, legally they’re yours’, but I paid him for the cars anyway. It was only fair.”

Dudding relishes sharing his private collection, called Studio 434, and there’s a dramatic moment in store for anyone fortunate enough to be invited. Visitors entering through the workaday entrance, past the washrooms and a couple of small offices, are left speechless as Dudding unlocks a small, nondescript door that looks as though it leads to another office.

It opens to reveal a sprawling Aladdin’s cave packed with rows of cars, gleaming under spotlights, stretching into the distance and parked bumper to bumper, wing to wing – over two floors. The vision is overpowering. Taking pride of place is a line-up of 23 Aston Martin Lagonda “wedgies” worth well over £2 million, and including one that belonged to Dodi Al Fayed. A dashing, immaculately restored 1951 Austin A90 Atlantic sits feet away from a two-tone 1951 VW Beetle and a dainty, 1961 Daimler Dart.

A Falcon Knight used in the TV show Peaky Blinders

As your eyes adjust to the spectacle, other beauties include a gorgeous red 1967 Karmann Ghia, a tasty row of 10 Jensens ranging from a 1968 FF to a 1956 541 saloon, that stunning “barn find” Lagonda, a handful of Porsches including a 1958 356A, a gorgeous 1971 AC 428, a 1918 Hispano Suiza Type 24, a 1925 Citroën 5CV and countless Ferraris, Rolls-Royces and Bentleys including one of Dudding’s favourites, a 1998 Continental T (“The last of the proper Bentleys”).

Next, as though standing guard around the periphery of the warehouse, your eyes take in the 50 or so motorcycles. A glamorous 1962 BSA Rocket Gold Star stands next to a collection of Fifties Douglas Dragonflies (bought in honour of Dudding’s first motorcycle) and two, little-known Clyno machines from the Twenties.

This two-tone Volkswagen Bettle is another uncommon sight – collections like Roger's are essential to keeping such vehicles preserved.

Other jewels – all, like the cars, in beautiful condition – include vintage Triumphs, Nortons and two stunning Vincents, a 1955 Rapide and a 1952 Black Shadow. Dudding believes the entire collection is worth up to £40 million. It is, surely, the most dazzling lock-up in Britain and one that London corporations hire for formal dinners.

“Dining among the cars we call it,” says Dudding, a larger-than-life character whose current pet project (besides converting his rambling Hertfordshire house into a Norman-style castle and dipping deeply into his pocket to support favoured charities) is a new high-security car storage depot for like-minded enthusiasts, also in Hertfordshire. “It doesn’t look much at the moment, but we’re getting there,” says Dudding. “They thought I was mad but it will all work out.

"One man’s rubbish is another man’s gold,” he says, before gliding off in his Rolls-Royce Wraith to seal the next deal.

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